I'm bound to fail when I write in Italian, but unlike my sense of failure in the past, this doesn't torment or grieve me.

That's what books are for... to travel without moving an inch.

Fiction is the only way I know a human being can inhabit the mind of another human being.

Pack a pillow and blanket and see as much of the world as you can.You will not regret it.

I am drawn to any story that makes me want to read from one sentence to the next. I have no other criterion.

A bicultural upbringing is a rich but imperfect thing

Pet names are a persistant remnant of childhood, a reminder that life is not always so serious, so formal, so complicated. They are a reminder, too, that one is not all things to all people.

Somehow, bad news, however ridden with static, however filled with echoes, always manages to be conveyed.

The first sentence of a book is a handshake, perhaps an embrace.

That the last two letters in her name were the first two in his, a silly thing he never mentioned to her but caused him to believe that they were bound together.

It didn't matter that I wore clothes from Sears; I was still different. I looked different. My name was different. I wanted to pull away from the things that marked my parents as being different.

Recognition motivates.

You are an Englishman, and have subsequently drawn the greatest prize in the lottery of life.

An open, competitive, and liberalized financial market can effectively allocate scarce resources in a manner that promotes stability and prosperity far better than governmental intervention.

I even got a letter from a young woman in British Columbia that began as follows: 'Today I am eighteen. I am sitting at the window, looking out at the rain, and thinking how much I love you.'

It is my contention that the process of reading is part of the process of writing, the necessary completion without which writing can hardly be said to exist.

You do not question an author who appears on the title page as "T.V.N. Persaud, M.D., Ph.D., D.Sc., F.R.C.Path. (Lond.), F.F.Path. (R.C.P.I.), F.A.C.O.G.

How you first meet the public is how the industry sees you. You can't argue with them. That's their perception.

The big question isn't whether you have problems; the all-important factor is your attitude toward problems. How you think of the problem is more important than the problem itself.

Just because it's not nice doesn't mean it's not miraculous.

When you've got nowhere to turn, turn on the gas.